There's Some History I Won't Touch.

I love history. Leave me alone in a room with a few books about various stages of European history and I'd be fairly content. I read more history magazines than fashion or popular culture. My friend is a museum curator and I'm insanely jealous of her career.

But there's a couple blanks in my history knowledge - and oddly enough I'm in no hurry to fill it.

I am constantly surprised that I know so much about things I didn't live to see (except maybe the Chernobyl disaster - but I was 2 months old at the time). But the Gulf War (the first one) and Berlin Wall are incredibly important events - and I was a stone's throw away from one while I was there for the aftermath of the other.

My family and I were living in a suburb of Tel Aviv, Israel during the build-up to the Gulf War. I was about 4 or 5 and was far too young to understand what was going on. We went to Jerusalem one day - one of a few trips we made to the Holy City. Our car was left in a popular car park while we wandered the beautiful city. When we returned to the car in the late afternoon, all of the windows were smashed. My dad said it was because we had an Australian sticker on the car. The next day Dad went to the insurance company to get the windows fixed but they insisted it was an Act of War so they wouldn't cover it.

By the time we were evacuated by the Australian Government, I knew it was because something dangerous was happening. I remember crying as we drove from our house to the airport because I was convinced someone was going to bomb it. I don't think many people living in Australia can understand that feeling. Israel is where my earliest memories are. I started school there. I had friends I was leaving behind. I thought I'd never see my house again when we drove away that day.

After surviving as a family of four living in a tiny unit in costal Adelaide for a while, we were allowed back into Israel. The Gulf War had ended and so did my worries about our house.

Once things returned to normal my parents took my brother and I out and about again. Aside from the colourful markets full of these wonderful trinkets and jewellery, there was a museum dedicated to the soldiers. Mum and dad recall seeing blood stained uniforms and equipment that was used in the war. My brother and I were kept outside so I never saw it with my own eyes.

I suppose the equivalent would be looking at Nelson's bloodied uniform at the National Maritime Museum along with his belongings from Trafalgar.

Back home my parents kept one of the gas masks we had for emergencies. I find this sinister souvenir of our time in Israel a rather quirky memento. I don't know whose mask it is but I know it wasn't mine. Young children had a mask that made you look like a walking condom with a plastic cover attached to the mask. Have you ever seen kids with their gas masks with little Disney stickers on them so they think they're playing dress-up rather than preparing for the worst? I wanted stickers on mine. I was and still am incredibly fascinated by the canister at the end of the mask.

The Family gas mask...

To this day it's kept in a cupboard full of my old toys.

 Wearing the gas mask was far less frightening than my replica PHG Gas Helmet (circa 1914). I applaud the British soldiers who charged into mustard gas wearing those things. I was scared just slipping the hood over my head.

Then there was the Berlin Wall.

When the Berlin Wall was being dismantled in earnest, we were in Europe. We even ended up with a small piece of it. It's probably one of the first little trinkets from our travels that I would love to steal from Mum and Dad's home and put on my shelf.

Again, I didn't get the significance of this little piece of concrete kept in a display cabinet at home. I knew it was from the wall and more specifically from Checkpoint Charlie but I had no idea what it all meant. Like the Gulf War I just went with it. As kids do.

Now I understand it. Now I read about the last remaining stretch of Berlin Wall being torn down - which is a tragedy and a travesty of the highest order. A few years ago I saw black and white photos of dead bodies killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall. I read about escapes and daring plans. I even found and read a play about Willy Brandt, the leader of Germany when the Wall came down.

I wish I had known about it all then. I was experiencing history but I didn't understand it - at school we never studied it because it wasn't history enough.

Our Berlin Wall keepsake, tucked away with other mementos
from other places we visited.

 Even to this day we don't study the Gulf War or Berlin Wall at school. I have watched a grand total of one half-hour documentary and one drama concerning the Gulf War. I've seen maybe one fictional comedy about the fall of East Berlin. Maybe if I knew more I wouldn't have such a blank in my memories (hard to remember details as a 5 year-old!). 

I have studied history but I've never studied the history I lived through. People who were three or four during the Invasion of Belgium (my Nanna lived through it as a girl and doesn't talk of it), the London Blitz, the Bombing of Darwin, or the nuking of Hiroshima might feel the same as I do now.

I want to know what the hell caused the Gulf War. I want to know why our car windows were smashed in Jerusalem. I want to know why we were evacuated from Tel Aviv and sent back to Australia. I want to know why school students died in combat.

One day I might have kids. They might be studying the war at school and ask me questions about it and I honestly can't answer them. I wish I could. But a part of me panics whenever I see a book about the Gulf War. I can read anything about genocide in Europe. I can pick up an essay about the Cold War and read it. Deep down in my gut is something that gets frightened thinking about it. My fingers stop when I type it into a search engine. I skim passed the Gulf War books in a bookstore and don't dare look at the covers.

A flag we waved enthusiastically for Israel Day 1991 and took
back to Australia with us

When people talk of Israel around me, they usually speak badly of it for its international relations. If we do ever cross paths, remember Israel was my first memory of home. It was were I began school and started having roots. I had friends there and fond memories. We embraced Israel and joined in celebrations for Independence Day, while still enjoying Australia Day with several families in HaSharon. We were treated as warmly as I hope new arrivals to Australia are treated. So I have a certain affection to the country. No amount of pressure from anyone around me can change that.

Maybe that's why I avoid all the books.

Maybe there's nothing better than a five year-old's perspective.

Maybe I've realised history is more than just war and conflict - It's also fond memories, happy photographs and odd souvenirs.

Blog Post the First - Nerds and Their Docudramas

In case you've been living on an iceberg the past few months, you'd be aware it's been 100 years since the sinking of the Titanic. For historical nerds like myself, we get a tad excited by anniversaries of major events due to the increase in documentaries that come out. We care little for the James Cameron epic in 3D due to massive inaccuracies (but we forgive Cameron because he has produced a documentary as penance. Check out the recreation of the sinking he put together with his CGI crew).

When I was a cherub in primary school (my mother scoffs at my use of the word ‘cherub’), I would read Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and historical books. Yes, I was indeed the coolest person in the back corner of the library. While I was wondering where my friends were, I became fascinated about the Titanic. I was ll years old and the film had just come out. Although I didn’t give much of a toss about the movie, the hype was enough to spark a fascination for me that has lasted more than a decade.

So in this centennial year, and now a mature adult, I would embrace the influx of new documentaries like they were cherished loved ones, and I would run screaming from ‘Raise the Titanic’ like it was a leprotic axe murderer coughing up bile.

I ended up turning my interest to the first cab off the rank: a barely-hyped docudrama about the 1912 British Inquiry which, either by luck or design, the History Channel in Australia picked up from BBC1 Northern Ireland. It was so quietly placed in the programming that, were it not for fans of lead actor Paul McGann, I probably would have missed it.

I knew 2 post-disaster inquiries were held: one in the U.S. within days of the survivors' arrival in New York, and a much bigger one in the U.K. less than a month later, but they were rarely addressed in documentaries or books. Now my interest was piqued. And for half a week I did what every self-respecting historical nerd would do: I downloaded the entire transcript (959 pages officially, 2,095 in MS Word) and read the full British Inquiry. If you're at all interested, you can read the transcript online via the Titanic Inquiry Project. You know the stuff you read in the books or heard in the documentaries? Most of it came from those testimonies.

And now with my brain full of Edwardian Perry Mason, I watched ‘The Titanic Inquiry’ (‘SOS – Titanic Inquiry’ in the U.K.). The one-hour docudrama focuses entirely on the Californian conspiracy in a Reader’s Digest version of Days 7 and 8 of the inquiry. Sir Rufus Isaacs' opening statement (taken from Day 1) is cut down to only a few lines, and the Commissioner’s verdict (taken from Day 36) is only a tiny portion of his findings which also dealt with lifeboats, evacuation procedures, passenger and crew behaviour, emergencies at sea, inefficient watertight compartments, and more. They do feature a scene early on outside the courtroom where Robertson Dunlop, the lawyer for the Californian's crew, discusses the inquiry so far. He gives the impression things are bigger than what they seem.

“They do not relish taking all the blame for the insufficient number of lifeboats... They may try and deflect attention in another direction.”

For those unaware of the SS Californian, she was a ship apparently only a handful of miles away from the Titanic when she sank. The captain is believed to have ignored the Titanic's distress flares and wireless calls for help. Vital evidence was lost prior to both inquiries so to this day questions remain concerning the Californian's true whereabouts and her crew's actions that night.

"Really try and do yourself justice."

While Isaacs didn’t personally question everyone like in the docudrama, he did question Captain Stanley Lord. The scathing ‘Do just think!’ and ‘Really try to do yourself justice’ were uttered by him to press Lord's ambiguous responses. Even without clear evidence, Lord had his name publicly tarnished and lost his captaincy. He soon resurrected his career, though. He was the Robert Downey Jr. of 1912.

"These are answers that do not do you the least good, and they are not the answers that you want."

The good thing about the docudrama is that the courtroom scenes are more or less faithfully recreated from the transcript. Obviously chunks of banter had to be cut for the sake of time and coherency, but the lines that remain are as they were a century ago.

However, it was a shame to overlook the Californian wireless operator, particularly due to the fact his absence creates a big gaping plot hole (why, if they saw rockets, was the operator not summoned to his post?). This was something Isaacs and his team touched on in the actual inquiry, and they questioned the Marconi Operator, Cyril Evans. He had been asleep at the time and apparently no one asked him to man his post until an hour or so after the sinking.

I’m willing to let this omission slide because of time constraints. As the courtroom scenes are intercut with outside conversations between the Californian crew members, I’ll assume that the issue of the wireless operator was settled in those unseen moments.

"The Second Officer remarked to me, 'Look at her now; she looks very queer out of the water; her lights look queer.'"

In the days since watching this docudrama, I've studied the transcripts further and reread the books I have with a whole new insight. I even opened my box of replica Titanic paperwork and discovered one of the large posters, a cutaway of the ship, is the same version they used in the British Inquiry. And so my fascination with the tragedy has grown once more.

A century later, questions still remain concerning the Californian and her crew's conduct.

When The Titanic Inquiry aired on the evening of the 14th, I watched it with 3 sports nuts (I claimed the TV mid-football game). By the time the credits rolled all 4 of us were debating who we thought was responsible. So on that level the production achieved its intention: inform and entertain. It provoked a discussion that lasted longer than the program itself. It didn't matter how much everyone knew, we all had an opinion for or against the Californian. In the end the football game was forgotten.

I remain in awe of how a one-hour docudrama reignited a fire kindled long ago in a school library. It challenges those who think they know the facts. It divides opinion and it shows us glimpses of a much, much bigger story.

And there's little doubt, in the middle of all this TV and online hype, another 11 year-old has begun their journey of discovery just like I did. Keep an eye out for their blog in the years to come.